What happened the last 4 weeks and that is remarkable:

1.50 ways to make media pay: Еstablished and emerging ideas

What’s New in Publishing presents 50 Ways To Make Media Pay, a special insight report exploring multiple revenue opportunities available to publishers today, from new ideas to existing strategies. Topics include: Programmatic and Native Ads;  Content Revenue Strategies; Subscriptions, Paywalls, and Micropayments; Ecommerce and Affiliate Partnerships.

Download the full report here:  50 Ways to Make Media Pay

2.  Google offers six-figure grant to innovative smaller publishers

Last year the tech giant launched Google News Showcase, a new service which involves the company to present content chosen by publishers.  Now small and medium-sized publishers across Europe could win 150 000 € from the company. Grants will be given to publishers who come forward with projects such as those that are aimed at increasing revenue streams or exploring new readership models.

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3.INMA: Kölner Stadtanzeiger finds success selling direct, regionally focused advertising

Readers are not only used to seeing ads in their paid-for, printed newspapers, but they appreciate them. Particularly in regional newspapers, these ads are regional “Lesestoff” (reading material) that is sometimes as important as the premium regional content around it. But looking online, the share of revenues made from regional direct sales for small- and medium-sized (SMB) customers versus the big multinational programmatic campaigns is usually below 10%. In print it was more than 50%.

Kölner Stadtanzeiger Medien from Cologne, Germany, recently scaled direct ad sales to its longtail of SMB advertisers significantly by a few hundred new local display ads per month. It discovered four levers of how premium content for more subscriptions and premium ads from local advertisers must go hand in hand:

–  Do not let local advertisers build premium ads, and do not let people click out to their Web sites
–  Sell exclusivity instead of “run-of-site” like programmatic campaigns
–  Sell exclusivity not only via positioning but also via user-targeting strategies
–  Do not sell via CPC and CPM

4.How four start-ups are figuring out the business of local news

Four North American start-ups are attempting to build sustainable models whilst also addressing the information needs of local populations. They shared thoughts on a recent podcast. The Mendocino Voice,  Santa Cruz Local,  Borderless and  The San Jose Spotlight took the mission of covering their communities with important information, from breaking and on-the-ground forest fire coverage to city council reporting.  Start-ups are free from many of the legacy costs the traditional publishers face. They can scale up faster as the business demands evolve, and some are still based from their homes. Whatever the obstacles, at present, these start-ups are

Listen to the podcast here: The start-ups saving local news in the U.S.

5.Why The Telegraph is making audio-first journalism a priority moving forward

In our previous newsletter from the start of the year, we discussed the forecast that publishers will be prioritizing audio & video innovation in 2022. It’s already happening! The Telegraph has been investing in audio journalism over the last two years, to boost its subscription offering and find a younger audience. Their dedicated audio team helped to cover the coronavirus pandemic and the Ukraine war both quickly and creatively.  They are not restricted to just making podcasts.  The award-winning investigative narrative show Bed of Lies helped the company gain a 120 per cent rise in audio listenership. The Telegraph is also considering the paid podcast subscription options for their listeners.

6.How news publishers made $11m selling NFTs

The NFT’s are the next hype! News publishers have sold nearly $12m (£9m) worth of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) since March 2021. Press-Gazette has taken a look at how news publishers sought to capitalise on the NFT, blockchain and web3 craze.  Time has earned the most from web3 initiatives out of all the publishers with >$10m (£7.5m). The publisher has established a storefront for Time-branded NFTs on token marketplace website Opensea. Few of the newer NFTs on sale are explicitly linked to Time’s journalism or past work. The next one is  The New York Times’s: $560,000 (£430,000). technology columnist Kevin Roose auctioned an NFT of one of his own columns – titled “Buy This Column on the Blockchain!” – in March 2021. Despite setting the minimum price at 0.5 Ethereum, the contemporary equivalent of $800 (£600), the price rocketed up to 350 Ethereum – approximately $560,000 (£430,000).
The Economist hit: $422,000 (£305,000). In October The Economist sold an NFT of a cover that ran the previous month which illustrated decentralised finance with an image of Alice in Wonderland. It sold for 99.9 Ethereum, the contemporary equivalent of $420,000 (£305,000). The Economist will receive 10% of any future sales of the work.

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How to instantly increase digital ad revenues with longtail print advertisers

Sponsored: 95% of news publishers offer some online advertising solutions – explicitly targeted to small and medium-sized businesses (SMB).

Though more than 80% of the small print advertisers book no online ads at all, and the primary revenue for digital advertising comes from national or regional key accounts – or programmatic.

We found four main levers that made the difference for more than 200 publishers. The little twists that made them scale local display ads versus those publishers that didn’t manage to scale.

Download our free report to find out how we put those four main drivers together with a detailed step-by-step plan to implement those tactics in your company and increase digital ad sales significantly – at higher eCPMs than any programmatic campaign – and at scale for 100s of ads per month.

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Happy selling!